Fiber optic connectors of a wide variety of designs have been employed to terminate optical fiber cables and to facilitate connection of the cables to other cables or other optical fiber transmission devices. A typical fiber optic connector includes a ferrule that mounts and centers an optical fiber or fibers within the connector. The ferrule may be fabricated of such material as ceramic. A ferrule holder or other housing component of the connector embraces the ferrule and may be fabricated of such material as molded plastic. A spring may be disposed within the housing or ferrule holder such that the ferrule is yieldably biased forwardly for engaging another fiber-mounting ferrule of a mating connecting device.
A pair of fiber optic connectors or a connector and another optical fiber transmission device often are mated in an adapter that centers the fibers to provide low insertion losses. The adapter couples the connectors together so that their encapsulated fibers connect end-to-end. The adapter may be an in-line component, or the adapter can be designed for mounting in an opening in a panel, backplane, circuit board or the like.
Various problems continue to be encountered in designing fiber optic connector assemblies or other connector assemblies, including applications involving backplanes, motherboards, daughterboards and the like. Such problems include properly and precisely placing a connector assembly on a substrate, such as a printed circuit board, accommodating misalignment of the connectors during mating, allowing relative floating movement between various components of the system and similar positional-type problems. Other problems simply involve efforts to simplify the design of connector assemblies. The present invention is directed to solving these problems and to providing various improvements in such connector assemblies.